


faded into the setting sun

by lostandlonelybirds (RUNNFROMTHEAK)



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin Eternal (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Dick Grayson is Damian Wayne’s Parent, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Grief, Hurt Damian Wayne, Hurt No Comfort, No Beta We Die Like Damian's Only Good Dad, Post Nightwing #30, Short One Shot, fear toxin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28824672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/lostandlonelybirds
Summary: (Always, Grayson says, I’ll always be here for you. You’ll always be my Robin. But that’s a lie, because he’s not here now. He’s not here in Gotham to play games with, to watch movies with. He’s not here to play with Damian’s hair while Damian pretends to be annoyed, and he’s not here for Damian to hug when he gathers the mind to do it. He’s not here. He’s dead.)
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne
Comments: 22
Kudos: 163





	faded into the setting sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bitterleafs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitterleafs/gifts).



Damian’s cocky. Perhaps too cocky.

His father’s as demanding as ever, brief warmth receding piece by piece the longer Damian’s returned existence on the mortal plane persists. As soon as he knows Damian won’t vanish from his life again, won’t roll over and _die_ again –

(We were the best, Richard. _He says through bloodied lips. He says with their symbol on his chest and his clone’s weapon through his gut. He says with his mother as his cause of death and with the closest thing he’s ever had to a father as his reason for it._ We were the best, Richard. _He says because he doesn’t know what else to say, because he has no other words other than a vow to keep him safe. To save Richard the way he’d saved Damian._ We were the best—

 _It’s only as he dies that he understands his use of the past tense. They had been the best, but now…now it’s Damian’s turn to save Richard._ )

—Bruce Wayne resumes being Bruce Wayne; a good man, a absent father. As Batman, however, he’s hyper-attentive. Critical and quarrelsome and tense. The entire so-called _family_ is aware of the reasons for it, reasons with names and emptied graves excluding the only grave he cares about, but it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. So on Halloween, he ditches his father as soon as he can.

Divide and conquer, as Grayson would call the strategy. Because he’d trusted Damian’s abilities whole-heartedly. Because he’d—

(That R makes you family, Little D. It joins us all together, connects us the way it connects me to my parents. You’re family because of more than guilt. _Grayson always trusts him. Always loves him. Always cares for him in ways no one else has ever bothered. He would’ve died for Damian, this Damian knows, and he’d never realized Damian would die for him as well until it had been too late to stop it._ )

 _Sentiment_ , Damian thinks to himself, _is dangerous_.

But Dick Grayson had defied that principle his mother had taught him. That _golden rule_ he’d learned as soon as he could hold a weapon. Because love had made him stronger. Love had made him fight harder. Love had made him a formidable opponent, well-respected.

Love…

Dick Grayson had loved Damian and look where that had led him.

(Always _, Grayson says_ , I’ll always be here for you. You’ll always be my Robin. _But that’s a lie, because he’s not here now. He’s not here in Gotham to play games with, to watch movies with. He’s not here to play with Damian’s hair while Damian pretends to be annoyed, and he’s not here for Damian to hug when he gathers the mind to do it. He’s not here. He’s dead._ )

Damian’s cocky in his reminiscing, so he doesn’t notice Crane when he should.

There’s a prick on his neck and a cry of his name – _Robin!_ – and there’s blurring colors and pain and agony and tilting buildings like shifting tectonic plates. Logically, he knows he’s been drugged, but for a moment, he thinks it’s real. It feels real enough, churning in his stomach, dizziness in his head.

Crane steps away from him with his disturbing patchwork mask – smile more of a gaping maw ripping the seams of skin and fabric than a human mouth twisting in a human way – and Damian moves towards him. He nearly falls, feels his father’s arms catch him, because he’s still so dizzy. Apparently, death takes away one’s tolerance for drugs. Go figure.

 _Fear toxin_ , he hears murmured, which is one of the least intelligent things he’s heard uttered by his father. He’d say so, were it not for the way his body seems determined to melt into the ground, the way his entire being is off-axis and spinning away in an abnormal way.

His father lifts him into his arms, muttering something to Gordon or Pennyworth about solutions and new formulas, but it’s all terribly distant. Other. Separate from him.

Absently, he waits for the nightmares to start. He waits for Richard to appear, to watch him die the way he’s heard described, because that is, of course, his greatest fear. Attachment had been difficult to him. Building connections, _relationships_ , outside of his mother hadn’t been something he’d been prepared for. But Grayson had made it so easy.

Grayson had been the only one to ever make it easy. Of course his loss would be Damian’s greatest fear. Of course coming alive to find him dead had been worse than any torture or mission or murder or punishment or pain life had ever offered him, that had ever been threatened. It had felt like a disembowelment, that knowledge, like claws sinking into his heart and tearing it apart piece by piece. Destroying what Richard had tirelessly built.

Of course that’s all this pathetic drug can offer him is such a sight, but he’s almost eager for it. Almost impatient. Because he hasn’t seen Grayson since his death. He hasn’t seen Grayson in the months of his return, and he misses him more than anything.

He just wants to see his… _Batman_.

 _Almost home_ , his father says, but Damian isn’t the slightest bit aware of him. Of the rumbling engine beneath him. Of anything beyond the family graveyard containing his empty tomb and Todd’s empty tomb and Grayson’s filled one.

He reaches a hand out towards it, desperate for some sight of his beloved brother. Desperate to see his smile, even if it’s bloody. His eyes, even if they have to close. But the toxin offers him nothing. The toxin simmers through his blood and in his gut, makes him feel off-kilter and ill, but it doesn’t show him Richard.

It doesn’t show him the death he’d died preventing. Doesn’t show him the _Murder Machine_ or its aftermath.

In the end, it shows him nothing. Because the toxin seems to know what Damian himself knows:

Life without Dick Grayson is his greatest fear.


End file.
